Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Modern Prevalence of “Weak and Vicious Minds”

Today many Americans are discussing yet another mass shooting.
Unlike the Black Marie Antoinettes and other “perpetually surprised”
African-Americans who don’t pay attention to the prevailing conditions that
exist around them, Sojourners take careful note of the world they live in. Including
the violent, entitlement-mentality nuts who live in the world. Including the
not-infrequent common denominator among more than a few violent nuts of having
served in the U.S. military after 9/11 (with or without actual combat
experience).

Nobody talks about the risk factors created by the
presence of modern day U.S. military veterans. In this hyper-nationalistic era,
it’s sacrilege for anybody to point out that a decade of wars fought by an
all-volunteer force means that the military hasn’t been screening those
volunteers as strictly as they would in peace time.

The endless wars also mean
that the military hasn’t been telling the entire truth about how damaged and
broken many modern veterans are. Oh no, it’s all swept under the rug with the
cooperation of the masses of civilian American sheeple. Facing unpleasant
realities might mean an interruption in the bread and circuses of watching
Snookie and American Idol.

On October 14, 1912, an unemployed saloonkeeper shot
former president and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt outside a
Milwaukee hotel. Rather than being rushed to the hospital, Roosevelt insisted
on delivering his scheduled 90-minute speech. By slowing the bullet, those
lengthy prepared remarks may actually have saved his life.

Theodore
Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign
speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line,
however, was a bombshell.

“I don’t
know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”

. . . The
horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as
the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It
takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page
speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through
each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I
was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the
bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The
bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try
my best.”

Only two
days before, the editor-in-chief of The Outlook characterized Roosevelt as “an
electric battery of inexhaustible energy,” and for the next 90 minutes the
53-year-old former president proved it. “I give you my word, I do not care a
rap about being shot; not a rap,” he claimed. Few could doubt him. Although his
voice weakened and his breath shortened, Roosevelt glared at his nervous aides
whenever they begged him to stop speaking or positioned themselves around the
podium to catch him if he collapsed. Only with the speech completed did he
agree to visit the hospital.

The
shooting had occurred just after 8 p.m. as Roosevelt entered his car outside
the Gilpatrick Hotel. As he stood up in the open-air automobile and waved his
hat with his right hand to the crowd, a flash from a Colt revolver 5 feet away
lit up the night. The candidate’s stenographer quickly put the would-be
assassin in a half nelson and grabbed the assailant’s right wrist to prevent him
from firing a second shot.

The
well-wishing crowd morphed into a bloodthirsty pack, raining blows on the
shooter and shouting, “Kill him!” According
to an eyewitness, one man was “the coolest and least excited of anyone in the
frenzied mob”: Roosevelt. The man who had been propelled to the Oval Office
after an assassin felled President William McKinley bellowed out, “Don’t hurt
him. Bring him here. I want to see him.” Roosevelt asked the shooter, “What did
you do it for?” With no answer forthcoming, he said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn
him over to the police.”

Although
there were no outward signs of blood, the former president reached inside his
heavy overcoat and felt a dime-sized bullet hole on the right side of his
chest. “He pinked me,” Roosevelt told a party official. He coughed into his
hand three times. Not seeing any telltale blood, he determined that the bullet
hadn’t penetrated his lungs. An accompanying doctor naturally told the driver
to head directly to the hospital, but Colonel Roosevelt gave different marching
orders: “You get me to that speech.” [Khadija speaking: Now that’s an
old-school man!]

. . . Blasted by political opponents and elements of
the press for being a power-hungry traitor willing to break the tradition of
two-term presidencies, Roosevelt told the Milwaukee audience that the
campaign’s inflamed political rhetoric contributed to the shooting. “It is a very natural thing,” he said,
“that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the
kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last
three months by the papers.”

Ladies,
be advised that the baseline level of decency, character and resilience among
the majority of modern Americans (of all races and ethnicities) isFAR below what existed in previous eras. Recognizing
this reality means being much more cautious about who’s around you than the
average American sheeple (or the “perpetually
surprised” masses of African-Americans). There has always been a certain
amount of bullying among children and teens. There have always been romantic
disappointments. There have always been workplace disputes. Injustice has
always existed.

All of these things existed without an unending
series of mass shootings. What’s the difference between previous eras and
today? The difference is that modern day
America is jam-packed with the “weak
and vicious minds” mentioned by Teddy Roosevelt. Modern minds that are
weaker and more vicious by several orders of magnitude.

Take Careful Note Of The Post 9/11-Era U.S. Military
Veterans In Your Work And Home Environment

I know this will anger and offend more than a few
audience members, but it needs to said out loud. For your safety and your loved
ones’ safety. Let me repeat some of the comments I made during a recent email
conversation:

. . . I’m
so very sick of watching gullible AA slaves continue to speak of the US
military as an “opportunity” for their children. None of the AA fools
I've known who have signed up for that bs can explain why they’re risking their
lives, except for a meager paycheck they feel they can’t get anywhere else.
None of the AA cannon fodder or their parents will acknowledge that warfare
tends to drive people crazy. Or that if a job literally destroys you, then it’s
not accurate to call that job an “opportunity.”

The same
applies to the AA wannabe cannon fodder and their parents. They get very angry
when my response is to say that AAs need to stop encouraging/allowing
their children to sign up for that bs. As the economy continues to fail,
there won’t be enough money to try to fix these people’s broken minds and/or
broken bodies. Better to avoid having those problems by not volunteering for
military service.

Quiet as most affected folks are
keeping it, the US is reaping and will continue to reap the whirlwind with all
these deranged soldiers coming back. The AA military families I know don’t
openly talk about how crazy their sons (and daughters in some cases) are when
they return from the last decade of wars. But they quietly ask friends and
acquaintances to pray (and keep praying) for their now-deranged veteran
children.

The stories I’ve heard from the mostly working class, single
AA military mothers I know about some of their veteran-sons’ behaviors after
they get home are scary. I wouldn’t want such persons living in the same house
with me. Or anywhere around me. Too many of these veterans are ticking bombs
waiting to go off. The
government keeps quiet about all of this as much as possible (for obvious
reasons). Unfortunately, the numbers of veteran suicides and murders of
spouses, etc. will increase to the point that the powers that be won’t be able
to keep all this on the hush-hush.

. . . Guurl,
these AA cannon-fodder parents are cray-zee!

They get enraged
when anybody points out that this country has been engaged in wars for over a
decade. And God forbid that anybody mentions that volunteering for military
service during wartime equals signing-up to get killed or maimed. They and
their foolish adult children are “perpetually surprised” when bad things
happen as a result of Voluntary.
Military. Service. During. Wartime.

Meanwhile, they’re
constantly asking for donations of toys, money, food and prayers “to help
the soldiers” (who didn't have to sign-up for that bs). And extra prayers
for their now-deranged children. I’ll add that these requests/demands are
typically framed in such a manner that anybody who doesn’t donate is made to
look “un-patriotic.”

I feel bad for the
Vietnam-era veterans who didn’t have any choice. Not to mention that was a
previous era–before the US government’s massive corruption had
been exposed to the masses. I don’t feel sorry for the modern day idiots who
volunteer for US military service–to fight wars they can’t even explain why or
who they’re fighting–after 10+ years of non-stop war. Similar to how I don’t
feel sorry for the Iraqi and Afghan collaborators . . . err, interpreters who
are “perpetually surprised” when the US military abandons them to their
fates with their angry countrymen.

Didn’t the educated ones
among those fools see the YouTube footage of the last US military helicopter
taking off from the US embassy in Vietnam–while leaving all the Vietnamese
collaborators behind to meet their fates with the victorious Vietnamese
communists?

In both situations, a little bit of forethought
goes a long way. Hmmph!

Previous eras’ American military veterans didn’t
present as much of a security risk to the rest of the population because they
were draftees drawn from a more random selection of earlier, old-school
Americans. Old-school Americans had a higher baseline level of decency,
character and mental resilience. Not the widespread

But perhaps a
more frightening trend is the rate of veteran suicides, which Veteran Affairs
(VA) placed at 22 every day as of February 2013. Every 65 minutes, a veteran
takes their own life. And at least 1 soldier lost to suicide every day is on
active duty. Veterans with PTSD are four times more likely to commit suicide.So what has changed to cause this continual rise in veteran
suicides? Why are Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans so much more likely to commit suicide than Vietnam-era veterans?

We know it is not duration of
deployment, because Vietnam veterans spent year in country without any breaks
at home like today’s soldiers get. And, in anything, war is carried out more efficiently now thanks to
technology and knowledge born of experience.

According to professionalsin both the field of psychiatry and long-time military members, it may
very well have to do with the way today’s generation of soldier was raised. The
young men who went off to fight in World War II had far greater
responsibilities and faced more significant hardships due to the Great
Depression.

And just as the nation’s worst economic crash to date crawled to a close, we
entered World War II. Those fighting in Vietnam grew up exposed to a great deal
of hatred and violence as the Civil Rights movement reached its peak.

According to David Rudd, the scientific direction of the National
Center for Veteran’s Studies, “My worry is that they have not dealt with enough
challenges, enough disappointments, in life for many of them to build the kind
of resilience that is foundational when you go to war.”

How do you build that resilience? Through adversity and difficulty.
Going through trials and tribulation, while a terrible experience no one wants
to see repeated, granted young men in the 1940’s the coping skills necessary to
mentally survive war.

Large numbers of modern day American veterans
aren’t like previous generations of U.S. veterans. The same way large numbers
of modern day American politicians aren’t like previous generations of U.S.
politicians. The vast majority of modern politicians are unworthy of your trust.
They’re certainly not worth you sacrificing your life to support their lies and
political ambitions.

Ladies, take careful note of the post 9/11-era U.S. military
veterans in your work and home environment.

[*Bonus Note: Anybody who wants to
thrive in the real world will have to learn how to build rapport and make
connections in person. As far as I'm
concerned, the main underlying source of the decline described in THIS POST is
that certain types of “virtual” things can’t be effective
long-term substitutes for more direct forms of interaction. The whole point of
this online crowdsource thing was to replace personal appeals for contributions
based on personal knowledge or respect for the persons asking for donations.

No matter how much many
of the under-30 set want to evade and elude the personal touch, there’s really
no way around it in the long run. Stable,
sustainable networks are based on in-person interactions. The same applies to
business.

Stable, sustainable
businesses are based on some form of personal
investment into something. Even with purchases that aren’t so apparently
personal. Like the way many readers buy fiction: They actively seek out some
writers’ books because they like those particular writers’ individual voices.
Not because they thought their internet campaign was cool.

Readers will do a
one-off experiment with ebooks based on cool marketing, etc. But they go out of
their way to purchase ebooks, movie tickets, and so on based on things like
word of mouth recommendations from sources they trust, like friends and
relatives, and so on.

Friday, September 6, 2013

HERE'S an excellent
blog post for you to consider. Regarding these sorts of media issues, do you
know what the underlying problem is? As far as I’m concerned, the underlying
problem is that African-American (AA) women consume way too much media.

The vast majority
of us watch FAR too much TV, we listen to too much radio, we spend too much
time online. In short, like AA males, the vast majority of AA women are too
plugged-in. And not cultivating their virtues, talents or charms.

Unlike the typical
AA female zombie consumer who eagerly laps up anything at all that
features Black-skinned faces—even when it’s something degrading—the Sojourners:

Have no idea what folks are talking about at negro-slave-oriented gossip blogs.

Have no idea what most negro slave celebrities are up to (because these are generally nonproductive people who aren’t doing anything worth knowing about).

Have no idea who the latest (c)rappers are or what they’re doing.

The Sojourners have
more common sense than to waste their time with such mess. Sojourners know that
the traditional opening strategy for many upstart, minimal-quality cable TV networks
is to pimp the AA consumer zombies. These networks use cheap, low-quality
Black-oriented programming to build an initial audience of faithful AA consumer
zombies.

After establishing
a stable base audience of AA consumer zombie-viewers, the cable network uses the
financial base created by AA slave viewers to develop more expensive
programming designed to appeal to their true target audience: White viewers.

Once the new network develops a stable of programs favored by a sizeable audience of White
viewers, the network then discards the AA consumer zombies and the
Black-oriented shows used to attract AA consumer zombies. The network throws the slaves away like yesterday's trash. Two good examples of
this strategy are the WB Television Network and UPN. From the Wikipedia entry about the WB Television Network (emphasis in bold):

The network's first programs were mostly sitcoms targeted at an ethnically black audience, though several series during the network's first five years were also targeted at families. Even though four of the five shows that debuted in the netlet's first nine months – The Wayans Bros., Unhappily Ever After, The Parent 'Hood and Sister, Sister (the latter of which was picked up by the network after being cancelled by ABC) – were renewed beyond the first year, none of them made a significant impact. The WB expanded its programming on Sunday nights for the 1995–1996 season, but none of the new shows (including the Kirk Cameron vehicle Kirk and night-time soap opera Savannah) managed to garner much viewing interest.

Like I said, the Sojourners know better than to
watch the type of mess that the typical AA consumer zombie is watching. But one
lingering issue I’ve noticed even among the Sojourners is that many of us are
still consuming too much media. At the end of the day, media consumption is a
passive activity. It’s the inferior experience of watching somebody else play
tennis as opposed to playing tennis yourself.

The greater rewards in life come from spending less
time in passive activities, and more time actively living life.

(3) We’ve cleansed our social circles of
male-identified women, damaged-beyond-repair individuals of either gender,
along with anybody else who is unable or unwilling to reciprocate our
fellowship and support.

(4) We’re forming as many mutually supportive
relationships (of all kinds, romantic, friendship, religious fellowship, and so
on) and networks as possible. Our relationships and interactions are based on
reciprocity, not race or color. We support those people who support us. We
don’t support people who don’t support us. We especially don’t support people
who hate us.

We naturally gravitate toward
reciprocating relationships, and away from one-sided relationships. We didn’t
need a sermon to explain to us why we should not financially support Precious, Red Tails, D’Jango Unchained, The
Butler, Tyler Perry flicks, etc. Because we highly value ourselves, we are
automatically repulsed at the notion of giving money to people who hate us.

(5) We work toward developing additional,
location-independent income streams for ourselves.

What next? Here are a few suggestions:

Become Even More Proactive About Preserving Your Health and Food SecurityIt’s never a good time to be sick. In this era of
economic collapse, it’s an especially bad time to be sick. It’s an especially
bad time to be an AA woman who treats hypertension or early onset diabetes as
some sort of rite of passage. There will be more news stories like this one
from the past couple of months: Cries of Betrayal as Detroit Plans to Cut Pensions.

This news story
features something we’ll see more of as each day passes: A 73
year old African-American (AA) lady who is caring for a more or less invalid BM
husband who needs dialysis 3x per week. Multiply that type of set-up (1 or more
adults depending on ONE elderly AA woman who's carrying their burdens for them)
by literally millions of AA women. It reminds me of a recent comment to this post at another blog by a commenter named Oshun (partial quote from comment #9):

. . . It seems like all the people I used to know even people in my
family are on the razor’s edge. (Knock hard on wood) Underemployed or
unemployed + DBR BM and BW who keep having babies like it is 1945 and we are
going through an economic boom = disaster.

I have mule aunts who work full time and have nothing to show for it.
They keep coming around asking for financial help and food because they are
supporting DBR family who do nothing, but leech and keep up drama and discord
and have babies. These women are too young for assistance late 40s- 50s and
make too much money according to the poverty scale, but they are drowning.

They have taken in a lot of DBRs (sons usually) and their baby mamas,
and toddlers and newborns. And the suffering is palatable.

I have
one aunt who is supporting her son, his wife, and their two children. Sometimes
their utilities are on and sometimes not. Sometimes the rent gets paid and
sometimes it is 4 months behind.

Iam not an advocate for aid, but they need to
apply for it. And they won’t. They won’t even try to get food stamps, which is
the least they could do, and then buy food for the whole house. They also will
not clean or cook and then will cuss her out. So she comes over here hunting
for food.

Then the people on her job are trying to force her out because they
want to use temp workers not people they have to pay benefits too. If she loses
her job she is up crap creek and so are they.

My next door 40 something neighbor is one of the sorriest things I have
ever seen.He has moved in with his grandmother and is
leeching off of her because I guess it is so hard out there that baby mamas and
desperate women are putting these men out. I am noticing a phenomenon where
DBRs are just piling up on older female family members like never before. . . .

The Mammy Mules whose
lives are mostly filled with non-reciprocating parasites are being wiped out as
we speak. The DBRs in their lives are piling up on them; and now they’ve got multiple adult parasites sleeping on
their couches. As the Mammy Mules continue drowning, they’re going to try to
grab hold of any nearby functional Black person. Get clear of the Mammy Mules
before they drag you down with them.

Become Even More Proactive About Preserving Your Health

For those who are
healthy, work to prevent unnecessary illness by making nutritional and fitness
changes whose positive benefits are supported by peer-reviewed medical
research.

For those who are dealing with a health challenge, use conventional medical
treatments as the foundation of what one is doing while exploring alternative
practices that might be helpful.

Let me emphasize this
point. I repeat: Any nutritional, fitness-related, etc. regimen should be an
adjunct to, NOT a replacement for, conventional
medical treatments. There are a lot of snake oil peddlers who slap the words “natural,” “holistic,” “vegetarian,” “herbal,”
“macrobiotic,” etc. onto their products in order to make sales.

There are also a lot of people who have semi-food cults operating.

None of this is what I'm talking about.

A now-deceased colleague initially played the herbal, “holistic,” and prayer
game instead of surgery and other conventional treatments for her breast cancer.
As I mentioned years ago in an earlier post, SHE IS DEAD because of this. She died after several years of suffering.

She suffered and died after the cancer spread. She allowed the cancer to spread
by her initial refusal to accept conventional medical treatments such as
chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. She spent many months after diagnosis
doing the “holistic,” “natural,” “prayer-based,” etc. practices instead of
conventional treatments.

She gambled. She lost. She paid with intense physical suffering. She paid with
her life. I would urge folks not to make the same mistake. Don't reject the
blessings that God has created by allowing medical and scientific knowledge to
advance.

From what I've read,
traditional Eastern forms of medicine deal with the body's physical
environment. With cultivating the patient's internal physical environment in a
way that prevents disease processes from taking root and growing in that “soil.”
This only makes sense in the context of before
a medical crisis (such as cancer, etc.) has developed.

Conventional, Western medicine deals with health issues at the point of crisis.
After a condition has developed.
Conventional, Western medicine is superior for treating acute, medical crises.

The M.D./Ph.D. who wrote the book Anti-Cancer:
A New Way of Life (who is also a cancer survivor himself, by the way)
talked about the peer-reviewed medical research indicating that it takes a
matter of years for a person's body to create a cancerous tumor. It's estimated
that it takes 5-40 years for a cancer cell to become a cancer tumor.

There are internal
processes that support this growth (such as creation of blood vessels to divert
nutrients to the developing cancer tumor, etc.).

What this author is talking about is basically keeping one's internal soil
clean of cancer “weeds” by making nutritional and other changes that interrupt
the tumor-generating process. There are certain compounds within various foods
that hinder a cancer cell's ability to “hijack” and grow new blood vessels for
its own use.

The point of all of the prevention methods that are supported by peer-reviewed
medical research are to block the internal processes that enable dangerous
conditions to develop. Prevention only works to the extent that a person catches
the situation before an internal weed (such as a cancerous tumor) has taken
root and developed. If you wait until after a medical condition develops in
order to make nutritional and other changes, it's not prevention anymore. At
that point, you need reputable, conventional medical treatment.

Once the medical condition is present, I believe that it's best to seek out
conventional, Western medical treatment. And only use other things as an
adjunct to, not a replacement for, conventional medical treatments.

Due to peak oil and
economic collapse, there will come a day when the current, high-tech,
energy-intensive medical treatments will only be available to the super-rich.
There will be a day when most of us have to depend on herbal remedies and
prevention for our health. It’s wise to learn about such things while they’re
still optional.

Get Proactive About Your Food Security
With Personal Food Forests and Victory Gardens

Sojourners need to take note of how savvy
Whites are creating food forests to ensure their families’ and neighborhoods’
survival. They’re
also talking about hidden survival gardens. A group in Seattle is taking action on food forests. There’s going to be a lot of real hunger in the U.S. as
time goes by. Most AAs will be “perpetually
surprised” (as veteran Common Sense blogger Evia calls the behavior pattern) as
they starve.

The majority of AAs will be perpetually surprised that there
won’t be any additional government programs put in place to rescue them from
starvation. They’ll also be surprised to see the dialysis centers (that are
conveniently located in AA areas) and other medical care designed to treat
ailments caused by lifestyle choices (such as obesity-related ailments) disappear.
They will be perpetually surprised that the U.S. government prefers to spend
what little money it has left on wars, and not on propping up the dysfunctional
AA collective.

Meanwhile, the Sojourners and other sensible people will
continue thriving.

Addendum

Here's a comment to the latest Archdruid Report post that gives an idea of how fragile the modern hi-tech medical system truly is:

Bogatyr said...

I posted this a few days ago, but it doesn't seem to have gone through...

For all the discussion of resistance to antibiotics, the process of manufacturing and delivering medicines of all kinds is long and complex.

In Greece, pharmaceuticals are unavailable because pharmacies can't afford them. Here in the UK, we almost ran out a few years ago because they come into the country by air, and all shipments stopped when Eyjafjallajokull erupted.

Modern medicine apparently collapsed in Kyrgyzstan with the fall of the Soviet empire. Catabolic collapse in the West means the same may happen to us.